The Red King Cometh
by Charlemagne
Summary: Alice has been free of Wonderland for several months but her perceptions were wrong, it wasn't just in her head and the true master of Wonderland may prove her greatest foe or her soulmate in insanity.
1. Sanity regained

The Red King Cometh   
  
Disclaimer: I don't own Alice or American McGee's Alice but I do think they are damn cool. The following story is meant as a sequel to the video game somewhat though I don't think there is exactly too much in the way of spoilers there being as it is a first person shooter to sanity. I wanted to do a story however tying it a bit more to Lewis Carol's most intriguing character (in my opinion) The Red King. This story is primarily a horror story but there is a little bit of romance involved though nothing any normal human being might call healthy.  
  
The clock struck twelve as the grandfather clock in Alice's sister's home. It was an unseemly hour for a woman to still be awake at this time but Alice couldn't help it. After so many years at the asylum to suddenly be free of the guilt, the catatonia, the horror that she had seen....it was almost too much to bear. Her sister had accepted her as family and so had her husband and children but Alice wasn't really a part of their lives. To them she was an embarrassment and it was obvious they were also a bit afraid of her. It wasn't this frustration that kept her awake this night, they couldn't relate to her with what she'd seen but she didn't want them to. After walking through Wonderland for a second time and seeing all the phantoms of her childhood through a shattered mirror, she never wanted to those experiences shared by anyone else but they haunted her still. Alice thus just sat in the queen size bed in the northern most part of the estate's hall and looked out the open balcony doors into a moonlit night.  
  
"Meow." the sound was almost an echo in the night and one that sent Alice to grabbing the sheets with instinctive dread.  
  
"No." Alice said firmly, it wasn't possible.  
  
"Oh yes Alice. I'm back." The grin of sharp greenish-yellow teeth appeared before the rest of the emanciated cat. It hovered over her bed before gently floating down onto her lap.  
  
"Your dead." Alice stared her eyes at the Chesire Cat and considered reaching her hand out to strangle her mentor.  
  
"As I recall you left all of Wonderland dead. You set aside you little girl things and thus thought you killed us all. Careless. Tut Tut tut." The cat walked up her chest and placed it's paws on her breasts.  
  
"I thought I left Wonderland because I killed damn near every last living in the....kingdom." Alice wanted to scream out obscenities but she didn't want to disturb her sister or her family. Tears began to well up in her eyes as she thought about having to go back to the asylum.  
  
"Oh you did. Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dumb, the Mad Hatter, legions of cards and chess pieces, flying ants, The Duchess, and of course the Queen. However unfortunately Alice we're not beings of flesh and blood." The Cheshire cat counted on his paws as his flesh slowly disappeared. The process left nothing but muscle but before long even that disappeared and a skeleton was all that was visible but still quite animate.  
  
"Yes but bone breaks just as well as flesh squishes." Alice reached for a copy of the book Lewis Carol had written about her experiences (before she'd lost her mind) to crush her guide with.  
  
"Tut tut Alice, you shouldn't worry about going mad again. Though truth be told I would say that no one can truly escape madness. It's just which types of madness are more socially acceptable than others. For instance, war on a nation that kills fifty thousand civilians and soldiers as opposed to cracking your neighbor's head open with a hatchet to see what color his brains are." The Cheshire Cat faded back in and licked what looked like blood off his fingers.  
  
"Sane people don't see talking magical cats." Alice said putting the book down.  
  
"Well then they must be doing something wrong. Actually Alice it never really was your fault you saw all the things you did. It wasn't really your fault that your parents died either though try telling that to...." The Cheshire cat raised a few whiskers as Alice pulled a butcher's knife from under her pillow.  
  
"Mention my parents again at your peril." Alice said, recognizing how stupid it was to threaten a hallucination.  
  
"My our attitude towards purveyors of nonsense has taken an even worse course than when I last left you." The Cheshire Cat said.  
  
"Let's say I've learned better than to trust you and the people from Wonderland." Alice remembered the butchery she had cut across the fantasy world. Butchery she'd loved in some sick twisted part of her heart. In that respect she was no better than the Queen of Hearts.  
  
"Or the Red King." The Cheshire Cat said, reading her thoughts.   
  
"The Red King back too?" Alice asked dryly.   
  
"Oh yes as is the Queen of Hearts. However the Red King has never left. The Red King cannot leave because the Red King is the heart of Wonderland and he who dreamed us all up....including you." The Cheshire Cat stopped for a moment and smiled at Alice malignantly.   
  
"I'm nobodies dream." Alice decided that if she was going to be insane, she might as well make a decent go of it and be insane out of her bed. Getting out with her long white nightgown trailing around her body, Alice lit a lamp and sat down at her room's breakfast-table.   
  
"Well unless you count the tiresome deity the Vicar's rant about continually, you are technically correct. However the Red King brought you to Wonderland when it was still a place of happiness and beauty. The Red King also brought you to Wonderland when it was Hell. The Red King brought all those laughing happy children like you who unfortunately went completely stark raving mad and ended up wandering dreadfully screaming through the night." The Cheshire Cat let his words linger a bit as Alice shuddered. The betrayal of those she'd befriended in Wonderland had been less painful than seeing the faces of all those insane little ones wandering through the horror filled dream-scape.   
  
"Speak plainly." Alice eyed the cat who was now sitting on the table looking her square in the eye.   
  
"The Theosophy nutters speak about men with supernaturally powerful minds who can read thoughts, project their souls from their bodies, and talk to ghosts." The Cheshire Cat disappeared and suddenly the lamp she had lit flickered in a heavy wind from the outside. It was just like a ghostly manifestation from a tired parlor room mystery.   
  
"And what does this have to do with the Red King?" Alice asked as she covered the lamp with her hand even though it was rather pointless since it already had glass between the flame and the wind.   
  
"The Red King was beyond all that. The Red King could create entire worlds by retreating into his mind and make those dreams that people have every night last indefinitely. Eventually loneliness or desire to share his creation led him to draw other children into his own private Heaven." The Cheshire Cat stopped to wash his paws off with Alice's pitcher of water. Alice didn't blame the Chesire Cat for not cleaning himself as other cats did, she'd would hate to touch his grime covered fur with her tongue.   
  
"And then my parents died and I somehow turned it all to Hell?" Alice asked crossing her arms and getting up, careful to keep the knife in front of her. If the Cat had shown up he might have brought friends though being she still believed this to be a hallucination it was rather pointless to stab them. It would make her feel a great deal better however.   
  
"Right events, wrong sequence. The Red King was the one traumatized and his scream of horror was heard all across the world. As the Red King went mad so did his insanity go into the minds of every single child he touched. Around them tragedies struck to make sure that they did. Pyro-kinesis Alice resulted in your parents death but left you untouched. The Red King would kill your family Alice but he'd never hurt YOU." The Cheshire cat pointed at her with his left paw and his smile wider than ever.   
  
Alice blinked as she let the knife drop to the floor. Her memories of the fire were crystal clear and what she remembered most and was most horrifying, the key that had led to her insanity was that the FLAME HAD NOT BURNED. If she was insane this could just be a false memory but something felt right. The rest of the statement then struck Alice like a lightning bolt "Then the insane children?"  
  
"Every last one of them lost their minds. Sometimes it was a fire, sometimes it was a carriage accident, sometimes they just took weapons and did in the adults themselves. I thought they might have been salvation for the Red King at one time but none of them proved to have the stones in the end. Only you Alice succeeded in freeing yourself from the twisted dreamscape and healing. The Rest....just rot still." The Cat sighed and wagged it's tail a bit under Alice's nose as she leaned down to pick up the cat.   
  
"What do you want then?" Alice said and looked at her cat with new eyes, he was the only one who understood her.   
  
"Wonderland has returned to the way it was or at least has taken on again a dark cast. Your freeing yourself bought many inhabitants back their sanity but it's not enough to drive away all the insane children's dreams or the Red King 's evil. You did affect me enough that I have some sentimental feeling however...enough feeling that I want to see the children freed and the Red King killed." The Cheshire Cat smiled as Alice lifted him up into the air. The Cat slowly faded from view and his grin broke into a dozen teeth before reassembling before Alice's eyes.   
  
"I don't kill....people." Alice added the last part at the end.   
  
"I think you'll change your mind once you see what he's done lately." the Cheshire Cat took Alice by the hand and they went flying out the night door and down the rabbit hole to their fate.   
  
***  
  
The Red King struggled in his bonds even as he was not aware of what was going on around him. His eyes had a vacant look about them that betrayed with every fidget and eye movement that his mind was still there. He was trapped though, trapped in in a never-ending dream that would have him violently mad if not for the straight jacket wrapped around him. The Asylum in North Umberland was prized for it's "discretion" but it was still filthy and worse was known for it's revolutionary treatments that required a great deal of people to experiment on. What was worse was that the Red King was no older than Alice and he might have actually been a handsome man underneath all the hospital filth and grime had his life gone different. His hair was grown long though and so was his beard. Red hair and green eyes stared outwards even as they took in nothing. The door to the cell then opened as the midnight visitor came to the madman who started the cycle of insanity so many years past.   
  
"Merriweather McTaggert. Catatonic for...well as long as anyone can remember." Assistant Head Physician Doctor Edwyn Jameson looked over the chart that had been given him.   
  
"Beware Doctor, that one can snap any minute. He's only done it a few times but that night that Alice girl woke up he broke an orderly's back with his bare hands." Nurse Ratchet said with a slight warning to the Doctor from Edinburough as two other orderlies wheeled in his equipment.   
  
"The McTaggert family is a very powerful and wealthy one Nurse. If I can cure this man of his affliction then the entire medical community will hear of it. I think for something like this, I can handle one unruly patient." Doctor Jameson said and ushered the Nurse a way. For his electrical healing process the Doctor would have to have complete privacy with his subject. Frankly the treatment had been known to kill the person involved and while he was sure that wasn't going to happen this time (Mr. McTaggert was very important after all) he didn't want any witnesses just in case.   
  
Merriweather stared blankly at the wall as the machinery was slowly attached to his body.   
  
"Don't worry, this won't hurt a bit." Doctor Jameson walked back to the generator and cranked it up for several minutes with an awful whine. It was so loud that he completely missed the Red King speaking in a low, hushed, whisper.   
  
"Alice....your coming back to play with me." The Red King smiled.   
  
TO BE CONTINUED  
  
-Charlemagne  



	2. Alice's arrival in Wonderland

Red King Part 2  
  
Alice appeared once again in Wonderland as she was set down gently for once in the strange and surreal surroundings. She couldn't exactly tell where she was at first because Wonderland was always changing but it was high and she spotted a few familiar landmarks soon enough. Alice gripped her hands around her dress as if chilled once she got a good at the place.   
  
"I had hoped Wonderland would have healed with me." Alice pulled out her knife that had since become a Vorpal sword in her hands.  
  
The trees were blasted, the sky still wrapped in a perpetual nightmarish storm, the roads caked in blood, and in the center of Wonderland past the most twisted hedge maze of them all was a House of Cards that rose high into the air. The last was one of the worst sights Alice had seen in the horror world. The Cards were all alive and it was much like looking at a palace built out of human bodies with their thousands of moans floating in unison through the air.  
  
"Alas Alice it is not you who matters most but the Red King. Once he is dead then Wonderland will cease to exist or it will exist only in the realm of each individual person's dreams." The Cheshire Cat encircled Alice like he was preparing to pounce on her.  
  
"I'm not so certain that I believe in your Mythical Red King. I fought and destroyed the Lord of the Red Chess pieces and I know Dinah set the fire. You also seem awfully anxious to destroy Wonderland too." Alice raised an eyebrow at the Cheshire Cat who spun his head on his forepaw finger.  
  
"You must realize Alice that I really am completely insane. The destruction of Wonderland is a small price to pay to satisfy that little itch of conscience you gave me. Besides I need to defend my fellow cat to the death which I have you might recall." The Cat receded backwards into the ground as a funeral lily grew up in the spot where he disappeared.  
  
"Lovely, where does the Red King live?" Alice asked as she suspected the Giant Castle but things were never that simple.  
  
"The Giant Castle. He unlike the Queen of Hearts doesn't make any pronouncements of doom himself but relies on the Jokers. Will you scratch my tummy?" The Cheshire Cat's voice echoed from the ground before his decayed corpse rose up and gradually turned into the anorexic little beastie that she knew him well as. His belly was covered in scars and they looked exactly like fingernail marks.  
  
Alice blinked. Apparently they were that simple when they weren't expected to be. "Ewww. Now who exactly is the Jester?" Alice asked as she leaned down to scratch the Cheshire Cat's stomach.  
  
"Ah he is the Mad Hatter to our new Queen of Hearts, the second in Command of the Darkness. Both have returned thanks to your slaughtering them in bizarre and horrible ways to a state of normal madness however and no longer are quite so menacing. The Jester is the Wild Card however and since he killed the other Wild Card is even more unpredictable."  
  
"Two Wilds make a right?" Alice asked before shaking her head, she really hated puns.  
  
"Of course, this is Wonderland." The Cat smiled.  
  
"What's he like?" Alice said beginning her walk down the paths of Wonderland toward her foe, with any luck perhaps the sheer volume of Dreams she'd destroyed would make this trip a bit less hazardous than her previous one.   
  
"Who Dinah?" The Cheshire Cat asked.  
  
"No, the Jester. What about Dinah?" Alice asked suspiciously. Her cat had died in the fire and would have long since died of old age she was sure had she not.  
  
"Nothing about Dinah. Oh the Jester is your typical Wonderland resident. Completely psychotic with a huge jaw and row after row of teeth that allow him to bite the heads off young women and swallow babies whole....that causes them to die in their sleep you know...ah SIDs." the Cheshire Cat said somewhat wistfully.  
  
"Go on." Alice heard the creeping of very large crickets which shouldn't be since she was her normal size and they would supposed to be as well.  
  
"Curiously enough he seems to enjoy medical experimentation because he's usually in a large white coat with one of those stupid circular mirrors on the top of his head and the fact his jester hands are made out of scalpels. His jester's hat is made out of lightning too and out of skin sheds pills as he reeks a trail of slimy powders. You know the type." The Cheshire Cat yawned and opened his mouth wide to swallow a tiny moth fluttering by.  
  
Actually Alice did know the type, the Jester sounded like a demented variation on her own Doctor. "What kind of medical experimentation?"  
  
"Well the powders he leaves behind he often gives to the animals and causes some.....odd changes to their behavior and physiology, well not odd since odd in Wonderland would be normal but to you...well see for yourself." The Cat disappeared even as beside Alice she saw the trees part and reeking acidic butter and chunks of fungus covered break that exploded like grenades....she came face to face with a six foot seven Bread and Butterfly.  
  
***  
  
Merriweather McTaggert wrinkled his nose as the Moth fluttering in the room from the barred open air window landed upon it.   
  
"Blasted Generator." Edwyn Jameson kicked the primitive electrical device even as it had trouble keeping the spark necessary for the shock therapy. He'd been working on the Jameson case for sometime and had tried pills, mild blood therapy cuts to the neck to relieve plasma on the brain, and had considered some treatments that would have gotten him kicked out of the medical profession. Electrical healing would be the proper method he was sure because his study of Chinese acupuncture had revealed that electricity went through special conductors all along the body. Mind control might be only a few steps away but right now he suspected all Merriweather needed was a recharge of the currents in his brain to restore them to full working order.  
  
Merriweather simply stared forward, his consciousness had been trapped in Wonderland ever since his mother had beaten him so badly that his brain had been damaged further. Truth be told he actually had preferred the change of scenery and would have been happy to live in Wonderland for the rest of his life had not the wicked imperialist queen put him under the care of Jameson and his mad toys. The ergot treatments, the dunking-exposure treatments, and mixed with his mother's abusive memories had unleashed on Wonderland horrors that tore into the physical world and his friends.   
  
'Poor Poor Alice...poor poor all....' Alice had been the only one of his friends who had recovered her sanity in his horror. He had hurt so many people and he had never intended it at all. It was right that he suffered like he did but his guilt for those he'd dragged with him into the horror was immense.   
  
"Well prepare now for sanity my friend." Edwyn smiled as he watched the charges flowing properly through the antenna again.  
  
'Do your worst Doctor.' Merri condemned himself.  
  
The slight chuckle of Jameson as he threw the switch was heard throughout Wonderland.  
  
  
  



	3. The Rain of Lightning

The lightning that suddenly rained down where Alice did battle with the odious Bread and Butterfly from Hell was as shocking to the Cheshire Cat as it was to Alice. The explosion of dirt, air, and flowers all around sent Alice to the ground even as the bread and butterfly exploded into large fiery chunks of sour curdled milk.   
  
"What's going on?" Alice shouted as ran as fast as she could from where she landed. The lightning was continuing to hurtle with every bolt coming closer to Alice's footsteps. All of Wonderland was covered in the terrifying hail of murderous thunder. If Alice had completed her classical education rather than having spent her years a catatonic, she might have likened it to Zeus.   
  
"I'm actually not quite sure. My guess is that the Red King's physical body is experiencing some 'difficulty' involving Benjamin Franklin's discovery. However it's also possible that he's just dreaming about large amounts of energy trying to kill you. That's the problem with dreams you never can tell where the metaphor begins....." The Cheshire Cat then started   
to electrocute himself and all of his fur stood up on end.   
  
"Don't do that!" Alice shouted even as she stopped in her tracks, trying to avoid being hit by a bolt coming down in front of her. The heroine of Wonderland was only partially successful as she was thrown to one side by the explosion and   
hit with scalding dirt.   
  
"Well look at the bright side Alice. Lightning never strikes a place twice." The Cheshire Cat stared with gleeful eyes and relished her pain as a sadist.   
  
Lightning then struck the exact area that it had before her and doused her again with scalding dirt.   
  
"Well it turns out an old cat can learn new tricks." The Cheshire Cat then held out his paw to feel for coming lightning and seeing that the hail of electrocuting bolts had stopped for a brief time.   
  
"We've got to find our way into that Castle." Alice took a deep breath and brushed the dirt which clung to her. It was painful to wipe it away since the soil had been burned in. Not for the first time Alice wondered what exactly went on with her body when these dreams occurred. The young woman was sure most men and women did not suffer like this when they dreamed.   
  
"Don't be so sure Alice. While not all may suffer from Wonderland, dreams do have the tendency to backfire in reality quite badly. As for getting into the Castle, I could appear there moment and do it quite often actually." The Cheshire Cat then leaped up on Alice's head where he curled up into a ball. The Cheshire Kitty sinking his claws deep into her scalp.   
"Cheshire...don't do that." Alice chided as she winced in pain.   
"Or what?" The Cheshire Cat asked.   
Alice pulled off her mentor by his tail and spun around into a nearby set of thorn bushes. It was a liberating experience to attack he who was arguably her only friend left in Wonderland. The old adage true though 'With friends like this, who needs enemies.'.   
"Or that." Alice said simply. She began to wonder if her life wouldn't have been simpler if her parents had gotten her a puppy when she was younger.   
"Fair enough." The Cat disappeared with his floating rotting yellowed teeth remaining.   
Alice started again towards the castle again keeping her vorpal sword drawn and her eyes to the sky for another hail of lightning. As luck would have it, a wail of pain and terror rang out from a nearby garden of oversized flowers. Alice considered just walking on past it but decided to exercise her rarely used better nature and investigate. This mission wasn't meant to be an assassination of the Red King, at least by her. It was meant to be a rescue of the Insane Children and if Alice had to free them one by one, then she would.   
***   
The Red King's dream self sat slumbering in the Grand House of Card's darkest pit. As helpless as he was in the mortal world Merri was bound heavy cold iron chains and suspended above a pool of bubbling cauldron. It was filled with the bones of the Frog Footman who had been cooked alive on the orders of the Queen of Hearts. Alongside the walls of the Grand House of Cards dungeon were masks of the children's faces made from flesh, spears which had the heads of children who had their souls caught in Wonderland's twisted embrace, and various implements of torture that only the sickest of minds would dream of...which is they were there.   
The Red King said nothing as he dreamed of all of Wonderland however and merely snored gently. Inside his mind was his dreams and inside his dreams was an even deeper slumber. It was there his attention was focused solely on Alice. Merri's every thought hung on the mysterious girl who had succeeded in escaping his world of nightmare and was the last best hope for the rest of his madness' prisoners. The Cheshire Cat who was his finest creation had not come to rescue the children alone but end his suffering with most odious murder. The Baron McTaggert would welcome such an opportunity for oblivion and hoped Alice would be the one to deliver the coup de gras.   
"Don't think we don't know she's coming Your MAJESTY...." The Jester of the Court spoke as he looked up to the bounce figure. The Wild Card was shaped like the Doctor who was the Dreamer of Wonderland's tormentor. His skin was pale and corpse-like with his fat features exaggerated obscenely. The jester's cap was composed of the very lightning that was his friend and his fingers hypodermics and scalpels. Consciously the Red King knew he wasn't actually the Doctor but a dream-creature, distinctly different from dream shades who were men visiting his world in their minds. It was a pity because the one man who deserved to live in a nightmare like Wonderland was forbidden it.   
The Red King was silent save for his breaths as the mad toad-like creature went on.   
"In your heart we know you thirst to have your friends suffer the same grizzly fate that I inflict upon your nightly. She will join you in suffering, mark my words. It's the only way she'll ever join you too. What do you expect her to do after all? Walk up the man who murdered her family and give him a kiss? Haahahaha." The Wild Card's laugh rang out as he lowered the Red King into the scalding pot and only his twitching signaled his pain.   
"There is no redemption in Hell." The words were muttered from the mad dreamer's lips. The creator of Wonderland sleeping through even being boiled alive.   
TO BE CONTINUED   
-Charlemagne 


	4. Griffon's pain, Alice slain

Alice ran as fast as she could to the source of the screaming. The heroine of Wonderland was somewhat disappointed to discover that the source was not one of the tragic Insane children but instead that of the squawking Griffon. The great figure had been one of her strongest allies and seemed almost unchanged from the last time she had seen him, which made Alice suspicious.  
  
"You will not take me Spider!" The Griffon said in a noble voice as Alice took full view of his situation. The Griffon had it's wings wrapped in the sticky film of a spider web. Skeletons of eaten Wonderland inhabitants were scattered about the web including a mock turtle shell, a fleshless set of lion bones, and quite a number of blank cards.  
  
The Cheshire Cat's skeleton crossed it's arms and sat down by Alice as it wagged it's tail bone. "Your wasting time Alice. You realize that we are all just figments of imagination here in Wonderland....him, me, we're real enough to distract and maybe kill but shouldn't you be worried about your OWN kind?"  
  
Alice lifted up her Vorpal sword and looked around the remains of the garden which seemed to have the very life sucked out of it. "My father said that you could tell a person was completely rotten by the fact they would kick a dog."  
  
The Cheshire Cat frowned sourly at Alice "I have a funny feeling I know where this is going."  
  
Alice smiled and walked on towards the web with her sword raised. The Cheshire Cat breathed a sight of relief before Alice spun around and gave the Cat a football kick to the head, decapitating the cat. Cheshire sighed from far away and walked over to pick up his lost head.  
  
"Griffon! I've come to rescue you!" Alice said, hoping that when she cut the griffon loose he didn't suddenly turn on her and try to eat her. Alice considered it shockingly ungrateful the kind of behavior the inhabitants of Wonderland showed her on her last visit. She supposed that she probably shouldn't be too surprised at them trying to kill her, in retrospect they weren't that polite on her first either.  
  
The Griffon was nearly free and flapping it's wings when Alice heard the hissing of acid behind her.  
  
"Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet, eating her curds and way, along came a spider and sat down beside her..." the creature was an eight foot tall beast with a giant maw and thousands of eyes. The acid sound was coming from the steady stream of drool that poured from her mouth.  
  
"And Little Miss Muffet bashed it to spray!" Alice launched her show into the jaw of the beast. True as luck would have it the Spider fell on it's back and the Lady of Wonderland began grizzly slaughter with her most trusted weapon. Each time Alice killed, little piece of her died. She hoped that whatever the result of this latest jaunt that she recovered something of herself in it, or she'd be nothing in Alice's body.  
  
"Tick Tock Tick Tock Alice your running out of time." The Cheshire Cat's voice rang in Alice's ears even as she severed the last of the strands away from the Griffon's body.  
  
Alice turned to the Cheshire Cat to give him another condemnation even as she felt blood beginning to pour out of her mouth. The pain came later as she looked down to her chest to see the Griffon's talons sticking through her chest and out her front.  
  
"Oh no." Alice then fell to her knees.  
  
***  
  
The Red King's anger was uncontainable and the storm intensified outside the North Umberland asylum a dozen times fold.  
  
'HOW DARE THEY.' the thought rung out as lighting destroyed a tree on the foregrounds.  
  
Alice was the only one who had yet to escape from the nightmarish fantasy-realm he had woven. Alice was the Light, the Savior, the Prometheus to humanity. That she be so causally destroyed was something that was not tolerable and not to be permitted.  
  
Merriweather struggled to contain himself even as the world in his mind reacted blindly across England. Nurse D who had abused Alice suffered a fatal accident with razor blades, a Doctor in White chapel became a murderer, and a abusive spouse had his heart suddenly explode. All the  
while the fools who thought they contained a simple comatose lunatic did not even notice the man's rocking back and forth with power.  
  
'The effects on Wonderland....no you mustn't do this to the outside world....there are still other hopes.' the thoughts continued on as in his mind he was tormented further by his demons. There would be no release for himself or the children and there in the Red King's face became only a  
menacing leer.   
  
'Oh the fun is just beginning. We'll laugh, we'll play, we'll kill, we'll flay.' the Jester card's voice rang in the Red King's mind. The Lighting tipped hat wearing monster made the Merri lift his hand up in his straight jacket toward his throat.  
  
'Off with their heads! All of them!' The Queen of heart's voice followed.  
  
'Break the babies heads against the counters, chew on them, beat them, feed them to the grinder! Pigs one and all and delicious to eat.' The Duchess shouted with glee.  
  
'Alice is dead....she's all red....' Tweedle Dee chuckled and lifted a mug in his mind to doom.  
  
'Corpses are white, Alice's eyes were blue, Life's a fright, and she's now the Griffon's stew!' Tweedle Dumb shouted as he toasted with his brother.  
  
McTaggert's mind grew ever weaker in the capochany of horrors that had grown larger than one mere soul could possibly contain.  
  
-Charlemagne 


	5. Journeys together

Alice woke up surprisingly alive inside her bed with the Cheshire Cat  
sitting on her mantelpiece. He was currently munching on the Griffon's leg  
as a drumstick and for once looking rather well fed. Alice pulled up her  
nightshirt to stare at her stomach and run her fingers over where the wounds  
should be.  
  
"Funny, I always assumed if I died in Wonderland I'd be dead forever." Alice  
blinked.  
  
"You would be but we managed to pop you out of there before you became...all  
dead." The Cheshire Cat yawned as he began licking his paws clean of flesh  
stuck between his claws.  
  
The Cat disappeared as Alice's sister opened the door and peeked in while  
Alice shoved her nightshirt down.  
  
"Hello there Alice. How are you doing? We decided to let you sleep in but I  
was getting a bit worried about you. It's almost noon." the beautiful  
statue-esque woman walked over by Alice and helped her out of bed much like  
a child. It was the kind of treatment that she resented on some level but  
was glad to get after the hell of the hospital. It was somewhat disturbing  
to remember everything of her experiences there but remember she did. Not a  
day went by that Alice didn't wish some painful death on Heironymous Wilson  
and his cronies.  
  
"I'm doing fine my dear sister. I'm dreadfully sorry for oversleeping and  
neglecting my duties. If you don't mind I'll get prepared immediately to  
perform them." Alice said in her most calm, rational, and polite voice.  
Intellectually it had occurred to her she was still probably insane and  
everything the cat was telling her was more madness but playing the role was  
better than a return to the asylum.  
  
"Oh I'm afraid it's already been taken care of Alice. Furthermore my husband  
and the children are heading into the country later today for a private  
family outing. So really you have the entire house to yourself." Alice's  
sister made the rather unfortunate fact clear, even unintentionally, that  
she didn't consider Alice part of the family anymore. After so many years  
Alice didn't really blame her but it was still grating.  
  
"I see." Alice said with a mild note of irritation she couldn't fully hide.  
  
"Oh don't be a bother Alice. I'm very close to getting you a job as a house  
keeper for a friend's family. We've decided to keep your past a bit of a  
family secret. It really isn't your fault after all and your not lettered  
enough to be a Governess and well....you know. You'll also never really  
attract a husband since you can't keep this sort of thing from a man but as  
a housekeeper you'll be able to get yourself a nice apartment. Won't it be  
lovely after those dreary asylum walls?" The lovely blonde fixed Alice's  
nightshirt and hair band slightly before walking to the door. With a wave,  
she shut it and was off.  
  
"Well that was quite possibly the most insulting thing I've ever heard....in  
the real world at least." Alice shrugged and crossed her arms. Her sister  
had been nice enough to take her in but her husband's arguments and the fact  
Alice scared the children was enough to want to make her leave with as much  
dignified haste possible.  
  
The Cheshire Cat yawned and poked his head out from under the covers. "She  
does have a bit of a point you know. What are you going to do with your life  
Alice? Provided of course you don't make any more stupid mistakes like  
befriending the residents of Wonderland again. Didn't I tell you  
before...."  
  
"We're all mad here. Yes I'm rather remembering it cat." Alice sighed and  
headed towards her bath to start undressing. Stopping only when she noticed  
the cat was leering at her. Alice gave an unpleasant stare toward the  
shaggy feline's toothy grin.  
  
"Yes Alice?" the Cat said.  
  
"Do you mind?" Alice asked, pulling her nightshirt back from it's halfway  
point off.  
  
"Yes, yes I do." The Cat rolled his head three hundred and sixty degrees.  
  
Alice shook her head before getting undressed and bathing. There was very  
little sense trying to preserve your modesty from a figment of your  
imagination.  
  
"I'm afraid your little performance last night made things much worse. You  
see madness is a disease with a single cure, death. Only the dead are sane  
and everyone else gets even more crazy as time goes by living. The Red  
King's madness is seeping through England like the Fire of 1666 or the  
Plagues just prior. Who knows how many children woke up with nightmares  
screaming or not at all.....every body he adds to his disease is one more  
child of Wonderland doomed to add his soul to the power. Ooooo yarn!" The  
Cat sighed before spotting a ball of string in a knitting basket by the tub.  
Alice's sister had removed sharp objects from Alice's vecinity so the Cat  
hadn't have to worry about being speared.  
  
Alice washed out her hair as she looked at the Cat "I wish I knew what you  
were talking about but since your still here I know I have to go back to  
Wonderland."  
  
"We're inseperable Alice. You know in the health care facilities of today a  
man like the Red King could live decades...bring about Great Wars. The Evil  
in his mind could even move on from his body to new troubled souls....you  
know that's why they loved you Alice. You were to be the Red Queen, the one  
to take over if something ever happ...URK." the Cat found Alice holding his  
throat even as she rinsed the soap from her free arm.  
  
"Just take me back there whenever you can." Alice said, wrapping herself in  
a white towell.  
  
"Ah my dear Alice in order to to get to there you have to go where you got  
from there." The Cat posed a riddle and hoped Alice would solve it quickly.  
He was not dissapointed.  
  
"The Asylum." Alice said glumly. She had to return to the source of her  
nightmares to rid of them.  
  
"By hook or by crook you'll have them." The Cat smirked.  
  
***  
  
Edwyn Jameson was now officially stumped by the Merriweather McTaggert's  
prognosis. As far as he could tell, the electrical therapy had no  
appreciable affect. The fact he was found with a different look to his face  
was no doubt just random muscle contortions playing their part in reaction  
to the electrodes. Mrs. Mctaggert's yearly donation to the hospital was up  
in just a week's time though and Edwyn's position wouldn't be secure if he  
couldn't show some sign of progress.  
  
"You stupid stupid stupid little runt." The Doctor looked down at the  
straight jacket bound figure who smelled of needing to have his clothing  
changed again. Seeing no one who could possibly care, the Asylum doctor took  
the time to kick the mad Englishman in the skull. The Doctor smiled enough  
to give the man a few swift blows to the sternum and one across the jaw  
which drew blood.  
  
"Ah how woefully uncivilized for a man in my position but I admit a very  
stress relieving one. The primative area of the brain occasionally needs  
release from it's baser primate instincts. For instance it's why no man can  
remain faithful to his wife or why children must be beaten by their fathers  
even if sterling examples of behavior." Edwyn said to the figure who showed  
no reaction to his words whatsoever.  
  
Edwyn recalled a polo friend of his involved in the trade named Heiro who  
had a similar case to this one. As Edwyn also recalled Heiro had a bit of a  
problem betting on the ponies as well. It was highly unprofessional of him  
but if the final treatment that had been so sucessful on the "Alice" case as  
described in the Mental Health examiner newsletter could be applied to  
Merriweather without anyone knowing of Heiro's involvement....  
  
"Well the absolute worst that could happen is you die." Edwyn shrugged and  
clapped his hands for some orderlies to arrive. Even if Merriweather died  
in the process Edwyn could claim he had been showing remarkable progress  
before some heroic accident.  
  
With no fanfare or care Edwyn left the room and clapped his hands. The  
orderlies outside comming to prepare Mister McTaggert for a trip.   
-Charlemagne 


	6. The Inmates are running the Asylum

The Rutledge Private Clinic and Asylum was Alice's own private view of Hell. It was very difficult to imagine that any place could be worse than Wonderland but in retrospect Alice would prefer to have been with the Lost Children 24/7 than the memories she had of this place. It was certainly an innocent enough looking place with it's cast iron gates, neatly trimmed  
lawns, and metal bars on every window but it was probably the moans coming forth like the wails of the Damned which ruined it's peaceful mood most.  
  
"Well if you don't mind Alice my dear I think I'm going to take a cat nap." Cheshire said as Alice paid the Hanson cab driver. Wrapping her shawl around her neck a bit tighter, Alice looked at the Cat with a more than mildly irritated look.  
  
"Your not coming with me?" Alice asked. Somehow even if she was mad, her delusions would be ever much more easier to bear than facing the staff without them.  
  
"The Inferno has it's guide my dear Alice but I am not your Virgil." The Cheshire Cat waved his tail about his head before crawling into the bushes where only his eyes were visible.  
  
"Who?" Alice asked blinking.  
  
"Oh sorry, I've forgotten you haven't read Dante. The Lower Inferno of Wonderland is mine than the Banality of Dis." With a slow lessening of the glow to his eyes, the Cheshire Cat completely vanished. Out of sight, Out of mind indeed.  
  
"Well now what the bloody hell am I supposed to do." Alice said, having learned to cuss a storm in her first few weeks out of the asylum.   
"You could follow the White Rabbit." The White rabbit suggested as the proper English bunny wore a straight jacket and had a razor blade replacing his rotten incisors from before.   
"Yes I could follow the White Rabbit...well don't just stand there stupid...go on in!" Alice gave the rabbit a thwap with her tiny shoe before looking around to make sure that no one had seen her talking to nothing again. It only now was occurring to her that this was the absolute worst place to be caught doing anything strange. She'd been unhappy in Wonderland tormented by the Red Queen and her minions but the one time she'd tried to commit suicide was because of the treatment here. Red King, insane children, and Cheshire cat or not she would do it right if they were going to try to incarcerate her again.   
"Hurry! We have all the time in the world!" The Rabbit tossed Alice his pocket-watch. The thing was broken with a hammer obviously having been taken to the back of it. The hands of the watch had been perpetually frozen at the number which Alice's house had burned down.   
"But I'm cured of that...aren't I?" Alice said as she gazed at the strange numbers, even as she reached the door of the Asylum. The heavy wooden doors had no knobs on the outside and only giant golden knockers. With some trepidation Alice bashed three times upon the instruments, watching the Rabbit move through the doors like the ghostly phantasm he was.   
***  
  
Heironymous Leonard Wilson sipped his morning Irish coffee as he looked over the stack of files that had been given to him by his colleague Doctor Jameson and stared at the connections drawn. His office grandfather clock was ticking silently towards half past three and the grim stone interior of the converted abbey almost drew his attention away from the shocking files. He was doing his best to ignore the presence of Edwyn in the seat across his desk who was waiting impatiently for his medical opinion on the matter.   
"Merriweather McTaggert, classic comatose due to psychological inability to deal with reality coupled with brain damage from accidental fall from staircase. Parents graciously incarcerated him under the pretext of boarding school to avoid a scandal to one of England's prominent families. Likely the boy feared the adult responsibilities of being the future Duke and cast himself from the top himself." Heiro was hiding his opinion on the matter because it was too wonderful and fantastic to consider. The similarities could not be denied though to his beautiful lost patient and as Doyle's hero said 'Whatever is left when all other possibilities are eliminated, no matter how fantastic, must be the truth.'   
"I'm aware of the patients history and present condition Doctor. I want to know if you think the case bears any similarity to your 'Alice' case?" Edwyn Jameson said. The ambitious young doctor was a cocky little bugger and had no respect for the tried and true methods of dealing with insanity. He wasn't quite as radical as the idiots who suggested patients might be healed with counseling instead of conditioning but Heiro wouldn't have minded never being associated with the fool.   
"A few superficial ones. Why do you ask?" The Elder Doctor hid his excitement like a master thespian. The drawings, the moanings in one sleep, all the notes were virtually identical even in the childhood fantasy period from prior relations descriptions. If it was half of what he thought it was near confirmation of what the Theosophical society had sought for years in proving the existence of extra-sensory perception. He had been a complete fool to allow Alice to leave, even if it had been done during the superintendent's visit. Heiro certainly would not let this subject get away and he'd have to find some excuse for an immediate exploratory lobotomy.   
"I'm wondering if your 'miracle cure' might be applicable in this case." Edwyn causally slid over an unsealed envelope as he took the file from Heiro's hands.   
Heironymous snorted, though Edwyn was likely to construe it as contempt it was really because of the ridiculousness of his miracle cure. His treatment had been a combination of chemicals which injected into the blood stream would alleviate the pressures on Aristotle's humours by turning cold and tepid blood into more viable hot blood. The actual process which had been unfortunately nicknamed 'blood boiling' by his colleagues had received some negative attention due to a few dead patients subjected to it. Heironymous wouldn't know whether it would have helped Alice because she'd made her damned recovery the very day he was going to administer it.   
"Don't be coy Heironymous. I'm in a desperate situation and I need your help. I've tried just about everything to help our young vegetable and if stewing would help I'm glad to do it. Open the envelope." Edwyn then did a rather shocking breach of etiquette by leaning back and placing his feet on Heiro's desk.   
The contents of the envelope did indeed make up for the rudeness by far though. "Where may I ask did a middle class runt like yourself get five thousand pounds?"   
"It's my savings dear friend from a great deal of things that I've done on my way to the top. I wouldn't get overmuch attached to that cheque my fellow alienist it's only half yours if the fellow dies. However if it succeeds I want the credit. I was effectively not ever here. If you never bring it up then I won't notice the discrepency in my account." Edwyn looked at him and Heiro had the incredible urge to laugh in his face. Still there were a number of rather well-connected men who were interested in his receipts at race track....he'd have to dispose of Edwyn somehow then to keep both patient and pay.   
It was then that the annoying Nurse Ozma who refused to leave the patients alone in their wailing opened his office door. Unlike Nurse D she wasn't suited for the necessary evils of managing a proper asylum. "Doctor Wilson?"  
  
"Yes Nurse?" Heiro said as he put the cheque in his pocket.   
"There's a Miss Liddell here to see you."   
-Charlemagne 


	7. and the Sane are bound in straight jacke...

The Cheshire Cat read from the ratty entrails covered book of Fairy Tales he'd managed to liberate from the Library of Lies in the City of Callous Adults. The City was an unhappy place where giant cannibal childlike Wonderland residents devoured those the Red King had brought into Wonderland for abuse to the very children he so tormented by keeping here. The Cat  
admitted he wasn't doing much to alleviate the situation in day to day life though. It was Story-time for the insane children in the Mushroom forest and the tales were never pleasant for anyone but him.  
  
"Then the Witch slowly cooked Hansel and Gretel alive in her oven as their tear streamed eyes exploded. She fed the pieces of burnt human flesh seasoned with cinnamon to many more children who disturbed her until she finally grew tired of living in the Forrest. After this was done the Witch married a very rich man and eventually became Queen of England, living happily ever after. The End." The Cat yawned as he patted his mouth with his paw and nuzzled his posterior a little more comfortably on the mushroom. Actually truth be told he wondered if the children were actually listening, he suspected they were but being insane they wouldn't probably respond to the story another week or two.  
  
"Ring around the Rosy! Pocket full of Posey! Ashes! Ashes! We all fall down!" two of the younger boys were wrapping young Jill's jump rope around her throat. The young scamps were doing their best to decapitate her by pulling as hard as they could but the Red King made then unique in Wonderland as unable to die. To Cheshire it was a manifestation of the  
monarch's guilt for killing their parents and bringing them eternally into this place. However by denying them the release of even death he had necessitated his own by the Cat's mind.  
  
"Now Now children what have we said about suicide? Need I remind you about Little Billy who tossed himself down the Jabberwockey's mouth only to have to suffer a very smelly and painful travel down his bowels?" The Cat then sniffed the air and wondered if the Army Ants were going to launch an attack. He noticed it was the White Knight, though with his dust stained armor.  
  
The Cheshire Cat played dead on the mushroom by opening a gigantic hole in his body even as he looked at the White Knight with a playful sneer. "How goes the war to liberate the Lands of Wonderland from the oppression of the Reds most noble...snicker...knight?"  
  
"The Red Queen is dead but she has returned along with all the other horrors. I had hoped that we would be free of the nightmare when she was annihilated but now they are as immortal as the insane children it seems some how." The White Knight sighed and looked at the children while one blew his brains out with a pistol he'd managed to locate only to find he simply needed to stuff them back into his head.  
  
"Sigh you poor stupid Pawn...." The Cheshire Cat shook his head as it twisted three hundred and sixty degrees.  
  
"Knight." The White Knight corrected.  
  
"The game isn't over until the Red King is dead or the White King which in these times of Suffrage is our Alice. The Red Queen might have been the most powerful piece on the board but her destruction merely weakened the horror. Plus as you know the game makes provisions for pieces to return in play. After all, look at me." The Cat explained the intricacies of Chess to the person who knew it better, there was one thing about being mad that was always enjoyable-being a smart alec.  
  
"I'd rather not man. You should really eat something and get a flea bath. I know what you say now is true. Worse, the leader of the Reds grows more powerful with each move. Yesterday in our world and the Great Dreamers know when in the timelessness of the Undreamt Lands the entire crew of a ship called the Mary Celeste was physically dragged into Wonderland." The White Knight shook his head.  
  
That peeked the Cat's interest, he hadn't yet contemplated that the Red King would develop the power to bring flesh into the Dreamlands. He'd thought about the Red King developing the power to take men's minds over, make himself immortal by altering his biology, and even his powers starting to move through time to affect the past or future but crossing the realms of  
Madness to Sanity was a new one. "I eat plenty of things Knight however I'm like a mind and never full. What happened to them after they arrived?"  
  
"They died of course. A school of fish tore the flesh from their bones and used the remains for their anatomy lesson. I do not know which is more frightening, the indiscriminate slaughter of dreamers or the thought the Red King will start to choose more precisely his victims." The Knight shook his head and took a drink from the rancid water in his canteen. The rivers of the Chess battle field were choked with the marble dust of his brothers but their was nothing cleaner.  
  
"I hope the class got an E for Efficient. As to the dreamer's fates I do not think we have to worry overmuch. I and the Rabbit are leading our Pawn and Queen to the position where it is checkmate one way or the other." The Cat gave a maniacal laugh before spitting up a hairball filled with human finger bones.  
  
"You realize that without the Red King and Alice both Wonderland will die or at the very least never be contacted with mortals again." The White Knight was not afraid of annihilation but his code of honor, sorely strained as it  
was, demanded he make sure his companion knew the consequences of his actions.  
  
"Most children's tales do not last a decade or more Knight and I personally have grown weary of craftiness. The subtle lies, the manipulations, and even the toying with my prey has staled. A Cat always lands on his feet but this infinite Cradle I live in is better off destroyed. Honestly I care not what happens to me but the thought of living on in even one of these poor little minds as I am now is too much to bear. To summarize, I understand purrfectly." The Cheshire Cat's flesh disappeared as his eyes grew the size of mountains in the sky even as they faded away.  
  
***  
  
Alice walked through the asylum halls with a lot more memories and trepidation than she expected. In her mind she'd killed literally hundreds of people, watched thousands endure unbearable agony, and even butchered close friends in order to bring about her sanity but here she was as weak as a girl seven and a half exactly.  
  
'No one could possibly understand what this is like for me.' Alice thought, looking for the white rabbit as she followed the nurse.  
  
"I understand Alice." the voice that spoke the words was soft and echoing in the wind, much like the Cat's in some ways but less self amused. The tone was actually more depressed  
  
Alice turned her head to look at the figure who stood in the hallway to her side. He was beautiful to look upon with golden hair that shined in the weak light, green eyes every bit as deep as her own, and a form hardened by years of duress. The man was dressed as a gentleman in courting clothes even as they were gnashed with twigs, dust, and blood. In his hands were a  
bouquet of black roses that he offered to her.  
  
"Thank you." Alice said, mesmerized by the man's look as she sniffed the somber decay in the dead flowers.  
  
"Miss Liddell?" Nurse Ozma asked as she turned around to look at Alice with her arm stretched out to a barren wall.  
  
"Oh! Sorry, I'm coming." Alice said, beginning her walk down the darkened hall of Rutledge. The cells of the monks who'd inhabited the building a century ago were now cells of a different kind with the smell of the place reeking of human wastes and misery. Looking through the iron windows of each door Alice could occasionally catch glimpses of the mad living here.  
Some of them were ranting lunatics, others cold murderers, while others were children who simply weren't able to process reality like 'normal' people. Some present in the halls weren't actually insane at all in Alice's mind but simply were adults or young adults who never progressed beyond the mind of a child.  
  
"And they call us mad." the voice echoed in her ears. It was strangely comforting and familiar, like a childhood playmate. Alice wrapped her shawl around her tighter even as she saw the White Rabbit hanging over the doorway to Doctor Wilson's office.  
  
"Nurse Ozma, leave us." the voice that sent Alice's skin a crawl went. If Alice had an ice wand, a vorpal sword, or even a razor blade she would have set her date with the hangman's noose. Doctor Heironymous Wilson was a tall man with lengthy white hair that if curly might have formed a powdered wig like the men in Parliament wore. He was wearing obscenely small bifocals that pinched his nose that was the prominent feature of his ugly gray bearded red face. Left alone with him by the Nurse, Alice had a wicked urge to run but she knew he'd catch her.  
  
"Alice I'm touched to see you've returned." Heiro began approaching her and Alice backed away quickly.  
  
"I know what you've touched. So what have been doing lately Doctor?" Alice said and the Alienist's eyes darkened. The memories of the liberties the respected Doctor had taken upon her almost brought tears to her eyes.  
  
'I could squeeze your throat.' the thought was murderously pleasing to her. Part of her wanted to do it more than anything and the voices of Wonderland wanted her to do it. Alice did not kill human beings though, that was her sacred law. If she killed him then killing the Red King might be permissible but she had no intention of doing either.   
"I was just playing checkers with an old colleague Alice. Todd! Theodore!" Heiro called the brothers down the hall as the hideous ogre and his mousy companion came up behind Alice. Alice got the creepiest feeling on the back of her neck which was confirmed when the pair grabbed her arms and began to try and hold her down.   
"Get off me!" Alice kicked, screamed, and spat as the Doctor shook his head over her.   
"You should learn to be more polite to your social betters Alice. A proper young Lady does not behave in such a manner. Take her to her old cell and give her a sedative." Doctor Wilson said calmly even as Alice wondered when the real world had gone completely mad.   
-Charlemagne 


	8. Real Blood, Real Tears

Alice struggled, bit, kicked, and clawed at her two obesely fat tormentors who dragged her ever closer to the Stygian Hell that she had fought so dearly to escape the last time. Unfortunately there was a cosmic injustice at work, where in Wonderland she had gained the strength to fight her oppressers, in the Earth she was a woman who spent the majority of her life comatose.  
  
"Come now there Dearie! Don't you struggle or we'll have to HURT you...." The tiny bodied Theodore accented as he grabbed Alice by the hair and pulled hard, a locke of it coming out by it's roots.   
  
"Girl nice...." Todd as the obesely fat Giant smelled Alice and she visibly wretched from the drunken stink of him.  
  
Alice felt herself shoved into a straight jacket even as Theodore blocked a kick with his hand that would have sailed straight to his manhood. Nevertheless there was a painful look on his face that gave the Wonderland heroine a sense that she'd broken his hand.  
  
"Bitch! You'll pay for that one! Todd hold her straight!" Theodore cringed as he pulled out something from his back pocket.  
  
"I am not insane you bastards! Get your hands off me!" Alice knew it was futile to resist Todd's strength as he nearly crushed her in a hug. The stupid ox was just as strong as one but this time she wasn't dealing with the demons of the Red Queen and wasn't going to tolerate their loathesome touch anymore.  
  
"Sure luv we hear that one all the time. Don't worry we've got an especially nice cocktail cooked up for you this time. We've missed ya but don't worry we haven't had too many between your leaving...." Alice heard Theodore's words as she saw the hypodermic needle that squeezed forth droplets of the hated chemicals which had kept her in the nightmare even at her strongest moments.  
  
"NO!" Alice threw Todd over her shoulder with every ounce of strength in her body even as the needle sunk into her neck and she felt the chemicals start their rush through her body. Pulling back her hands for a punch to his face she felt her knees give out and her body collapse to the floor.  
  
As blood poured out of the young woman's nose she could barely whisper a vow she had kept close to her heart since she had left the prison of her mind and had driven to the dark recesses of her soul. "I will kill you for this..."  
  
As she fluttered her eyes and fell deep into the oblivion that engulfed her once again in her own personal Fairy Land.  
  
***  
  
Alice spun around clawing at the air when she felt the feeling return to her hands and her legs. She didn't want to think about what the twins were doing right now to her body but to concentrate on that sort of thing in the world she was dwelling in was to risk the insanity returning.  
  
"That's assuming you were ever sane to begin with or that the men were. Perhaps those that embrace the fact that the world is utterly meaningless are the only one's who are in fact truly well," the voice came from behind her as she turned around and discovered she was in a duplicate of her old house. The house was twisted though like everything she encountered was. The books were blood splattered, the floors covered in marks from unmentionable creatures, and the flowers in the pots were dead. Sitting before a fireplace that contained a vertible inferno she saw a figure that she had never seen only once in her life before. He had been asleep underneath a tree and the warning given her wrung strongly in her mind.  
  
'If ever he awakens then you would go out...like a candle..or a dream,' Alice took in a breath as the figure arose.  
  
"I'm still alive though. You're the Red King." Alice said as she pulled out her vorpal sword and held it before him. He wasn't what she expected at all. The child underneath the tree dressed in adult's clothes was a baby fat innocent but the man before her was slick, haunted, and handsome in his own way. His robes were tattered and torn with the unmistakable smell of the grave about him. It was his eyes though that haunted Alice for they were so like her own.  
  
"And you are the White Queen. I am not awake though Alice so your life has not yet ended. In Wonderland I dwell in an eternal slumber just as I dwell in the realm of man in an eternal dream. The only place I am awake Alice is in you," the Red King spoke as he opened his hand and pulled forth a red ruby locket with sparkling diamonds about it forming the chain.  
  
Alice felt weak in the knees as the object was placed around her neck and felt like a weighty chain. Pulling her sword up she pressed it to Merriweather's heart and looked him in the eyes. "You killed my mother, you killed my father, and you've driven all those children mad. You drove me mad."  
  
The Red King's grin was exactly like the Cheshire Cats and Alice felt very cold. "You are right. I did slay your parents and the parents of many others. I killed my own parents Alice when they drove me into a coma along with aunts, uncles, and even cousins. Who knows what my power is wrecking on now on the mortal world. A whore who hears the growling of the Cheshire Cat that enough is enough and stabs her pimp to the Prussian General will hear the voice of the Red Knight and decide that it is time to knock down the nobility that keeps him oppressed. As I grow older Alice my powers are growing stronger and my control weaker. Perhaps it will lead the entire world into complete and utter chaos eventually."  
  
Alice spun around her vorpal sword to cut the mans head from his body.   
  
"Take your vengeance Alice for my hands are not clean. You were stronger than I in escaping the torments of my demented mind, stronger than all the othes who were my playmates. Know this though before that I pass into the darkness that your fear, horror, and despair have sustained me for the way you have slain it has kept what little remains in me human," The Red King bore his neck to Alice.  
  
'Kill him Alice,' The Cat's voice whispered in her ear.  
  
'His death is too long coming!' The White Rabbit's spitting tone hissed in her other ear.  
  
'OFF WITH HIS HEAD!' the Red Queen's screamed in her mind.  
  
"AHHHH!" Alice slashed down the sword onto the nearest table where it split in half through the chessboard that rested on it. The white and red chess pieces scattered together on the ground while the young warrior woman struggled to regain her breath.  
  
"We never truly escape the demons that are born from within us my Queen. Take note that if you think you can conquer the darkness of Wonderland from within you will be facing something you have no control over. The Demons that were born from the minds of the children in my kingdom and my own desire to torture and punish the thing that I most despise," The Red King did not have to tell Alice that it was himself, she knew the feeling well. Also how much hatred the unconcious could bear for a person that was only trying to help them.  
  
"You do not deserve your self-pity," Alice whispered as she pushed him away with a punch of her hands nestled around the hilt of her blade.  
  
"Nor do you deserve your molestation. Only one of us can do anything about the other's problem it seems," The Red King then snapped his fingers as Alice felt hot blinding pain like she was being ripped from her body into the Heavens.  
  
***  
  
Alice woke up with a start and stared into the eyes of Theodore who was undressing even as she got a glint in her eye that was inhuman, some darkness that dwelt inside her the touch of the dreamer had awoken. Ripping forth Theodore's belt from his waist Alice wrapped it around the Dwarf's belt and began to strangle him as she used him as a shield.   
  
"To choke to death is one of the most most horrible ways to die Teddy. However I don't think you'll have to worry about people doing anything to you while you're dead," Alice spit through her teeth even as Todd stood in a stunned sight at the young woman's sudden vicious attack.   
  
"One two, buckle my shoe...." Alice said as she reached down and ripped from her shoe, one of her buckles which broke off into a dangerous edge. Todd fell to the ground, his larnyx crushed by Alice's burst of strength even as Todd came barreling towards her, Tweedle Dumb lacking both finesse and grace in raw rage.  
  
"I'll kill you!" were the only words to escape his lips as he ran his hands toward her throat.  
  
"Three, four rock the door!" Alice shouted as she slit his throat and slammed his body against the cell entrance.  
  
Alice dropped the bloody buckle then as sanity returned and she saw the two dead bodies on the ground. The scarlet fluid was pouring freely from Todd's body and she had to take a step backwards to avoid getting it on her shoes. These weren't dream images drawn from the madness of the Red King and her own nightmares, these were real people.  
  
"I don't care. Hehehe," Alice chuckled to herself as she put her hand on her mouth and stifled a scream. It was liberating to know that they were dead and that she had done it, it felt good. In her heart her only regret was that she may be paying a price far dearer than her life for killing them.   
  
"Run Alice, Run," The voice in her head was of her cat and she grabbed from her hands the keys from Todd's body and indeed ran as she could from the Asylum cell and towards the exit. Knowing she may have paid for her freedom with her life. Outside a terrible storm was brewing and it was filling the air with whispers and horrors that she had thought conquered but instead were merely sleeping. 


End file.
